Seasonal, healthy and delicious vegetarian recipes, with the occasional cake thrown in for good measure!

Hazelnut and Fig Cake

As a special treat I thought I would share a cake recipe. So many things have happened in my life and with my blog since my first post. I will always remember baking those gingerbread biscuits, as the post name suggests it was a windy afternoon and as I was making and photographing the biscuits I also watched the roof of my neighbours building blow off, yes literally blow off!

Since then I have moved three times, lived in four different houses, gained a MSc, lived in Norway, got a job, celebrated love, fallen hard out of love, smiled, cried, made some incredible friends, tried hard to keep in touch with old friends and eaten a lot of food!

This cake was a complete experiment when I made it, I had no idea how it would turn out. The cake itself is dairy free, but the filling is not. I am not going to call the cake fatless sponge as it uses my homemade hazelnut butter which has a lot of fat it, good fat, but still fat. I thought I would treat myself to my favourite cake filling a white chocolate cream cheese frosting as I love it and haven’t had any since I made my birthday cake. I mixed some blackberries through the frosting which worked wonderfully and the figs and blackberries tasted great together. I used my favourite organic white spelt flour for this recipe but plain flour would also work.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Line a 18cm/7inch circular baking tin with parchment.

In a freestanding mixer, if possible, mix the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy, add the hazelnut butter and vanilla then continue to mix.

Add the flour, cinnamon and nutmeg and gently fold into the fluffy egg mixture.

Pour the mixture into the baking tin. Place the fig quarters on top and place in the oven and cook for 25-30 minutes. Once the cakes have cooked and cooled it’s time to make the frosting.

Melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water.

Meanwhile in a freestanding mixer, mix the butter and cream cheese together for 5 minutes until smooth and fluffy

Once the white chocolate has melted and cooled slightly, pour into the mixer, along with the vanilla extract and mix for a further five minutes. Add the icing sugar and continue to mix until the frosting is very light and fluffy. Carefully fold through the blackberries at the end.

To assemble, cut the cake in half, spread the white chocolate and blackberry frosting on the bottom half then place the top back on.